


Dissociation

by obsidianfae



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Deaf Clint Barton, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Inhuman Reader (Marvel), Injury Recovery, Kid Fic, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Clint Barton, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-01 21:58:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17875601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsidianfae/pseuds/obsidianfae
Summary: /dissociation/; noun; a mental process that causes a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memory and sense of identityEveryone has secrets they’d prefer to keep quiet. Everyone has regrets they’d prefer to forget. But whenever you start to forget these things, remember to keep an eye open. Because life has a funny little way of jogging your memory.





	Dissociation

Natasha Romanoff is not an adrenaline junkie. Things aren’t as simple as that. 

She’s numb. Not physically numb— since she  _ definitely  _ regrets wearing heels to work today, but rather in the deeper, more emotional sense of the word. She’s an empty husk, soullessly going through the motions of everyday life like some kind of zombie. She’s not even sure whether it’s a depression thing or a PTSD thing, but either way, she’ll figure out how to deal with it. These kinds of things don’t phase her much anymore. 

Before she was Black Widow, back when she was younger, Natasha Romanoff had a fear of dying. It was a natural response to her situation. Every moment was spent under the watchful, predatory eyes of the Red Room, and every assignment was a matter of life or death. A single misstep and her classmates wouldn’t hesitate to take her place as Madame B.’s golden girl. Natasha aimed to stay alive, and that burning desperation inside of her was the sole thing that put her at the top of her class

But that intense fire inside of her, the one that blazed even brighter than her hair— it  was smothered to soot on the day she graduated. When they sterilized and branded her a monster.

Fear doesn’t disappear as easily as that. Natasha’s a living testament to this, and she knows it well. It never goes away. It gets compartmentalized, repressed, and eventually dulls away to nothing—  leaving a void of mind-numbing apathy in its place. It’s a sad, dark reality to be a part of, and over time, Natasha familiarized herself with its desolation. Clint soon became her only lifeline out as she joined S.H.I.E.L.D. and their friendship became a constant in her life. He helped her unlearn the defense and survival mechanisms she picked up during her time at the Red Room, and she got to remember what the warmth of safety feels like. But nothing lasts forever, and as it turns out, old habits are proving to die hard.

_ “Lunch in the city. Me, you, and Buck later today.” _ It’s Steve. He’s one of the few people she doesn’t mind speaking to on a regular basis, but she really isn’t in the mood.

“I’ll pass.” She hears a sigh from Steve’s end of the call.

_ “That’s what you said last time I offered. C’mon, Nat, the only time the team sees you is on training days.” _

Natasha’s a blunt person, but she isn’t mean. No matter how much she wants to tell him  _ “that’s exactly how things should be” _ and end the conversation, it would be a blatant lie. The team is the closest thing she’s had to family since— well, ever. But when you’re drowning, it’s so,  _ so  _ easy to pull other people down with you, and Natasha would rather suffer alone than force someone to suffer with her. 

“And you’re lucky I even make it to those.” She forces a stiff laugh. “Not sure if you’ve realized, Steve, but the compound’s in Albany. I live in Manhattan. I’m not driving two hours to sit and watch tv when I can do the same thing at home.”

_ “Then we can go to that French place Sam never shuts up about. Pretty sure that’s not too far from you.” _

“Tempting, but no.” She should feel bad about this. She knows she should feel bad for snubbing all his attempts of getting her out the house, but she  _ doesn’t _ . At least she has an actual excuse for not being available this time. “Coulson called me in for an assignment. I’ll be at headquarters all day.”

_ “Tomorrow, then.” _ He says.  _ “We can get drinks and you can rant about all the paperwork Coulson’s gonna have you fill out.” _

God, why is he so adamant on this? All Natasha wants to do is sleep on her futon, drink shitty wine, and get paid by S.H.I.E.L.D. to be an asshole. Meaningful social interaction isn’t on that list.

“You don’t even drink.”

_ “I do, sometimes. I just can’t get drunk off any of the stuff.” _

She rolls her eyes and bites back a groan. “There’s no reason for me to go out of my way to meet up with you if all I’m gonna do is get drunk alone. I can do that, just as easily, from the comfort of my apartment. Without you.”

_ “You’re only saying that ‘cause you’re trying to push me away again.” _

“Steve,” she slates. “You’re really starting to push it.”

He sighs again. He does it pretty frequently when faced with Natasha’s unrelenting stubbornness.  _ “Look, everyone’s starting to worry about you.” _

“They shouldn’t be. I can han-“

_ “You can handle yourself, I know. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take a day off to clear your head every now and then. Go on a walk, get lunch with a friend— it’s not a crime to enjoy yourself.” _

He sees right through her bullshit, and it makes Natasha sick to her stomach. She’s a spy. Her entire career is based on maintaining lies, and by nature, she should be a difficult person to read. But Steve? He’s reading her like a fucking book. He sees that she’s isolating herself, and he’s trying to socialize her with the team again. 

If it wasn’t so damn irritating, it would almost be thoughtful. 

She’s not sure how to respond. Everything he said was painfully straightforward, and there isn’t very much she can say to defend herself without it sounding like an excuse. It would be a great time to change the topic or end the conversation altogether, but Steve’s not the type to let something rest so easily. He’s just as stubborn as she is. If she ended the call then and there, he would revisit the conversation the first chance he gets. There’s no getting around it. 

Thankfully, Steve took the silence as answer enough and changed the topic on his own accord.  _ “Say you’ll be at training on Wednesday.” _

“You’ll be at training on Wednesday,” she echoes. 

_ “Very funny.” _ He says with a distinct lack of humor in his voice.  _ “But if you decide to be a no-show again, Tony swears he’s sending a suit to your place to make sure you’re still well and breathing.” _

Breathing? Definitely. She breathes all the time. She’s breathing right now. But,  _ well? _ That part’s still up to debate. 

“Only if you agree to stop calling to harass me every morning. You know I hate talking on the phone.”

_ “You swear you’ll show up?” _

“Yeah, sure.” Training days are terrible. “I’ll show up.” She really doesn’t want to.

_ “Then it’s a deal. See you in a couple days.” _

“Yeah. See you then.” She ends the call and shoves the phone into her pocket. All the air is suddenly let out from her lungs, but the weight weighing down on her shoulders is still there. The thing about facades is that they’re a lot easier to maintain when you don’t have to meet up with someone. It might only be Monday morning, but Natasha’s already loathing the idea of Wednesday.

This should make for an interesting day.

She presses her thumb onto the scanner bolted into the wall and waits impatiently for S.H.I.E.L.D.’s security system to recognize her. These things always take too long to be convenient.

_ “Welcome, Agent Romanoff,” _ the automated voice says, unlocking the door with a mechanical whir and a dull click.

“Took you long enough,” she says under her breath before rolling her eyes and heading inside.

The New York S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters is a large cement building on 47th Street. It’s hidden in plain sight, in the middle of the city, so much of the building was built underground to avoid unwarranted attention. New York headquarters is nowhere as large at the D.C. Triskelion, but as far as Natasha’s concerned, it still takes her far too long to get where she needs to be. By the time she gets to the sector Coulson set her assignment in, the balls of her feet have already begun to wear sore. But, as they say, there’s nothing like a day of work to get your mind off the shittier things in life.

“Agent Romanoff.” The greeting grabs her attention.

“Coulson,” she responds, matching his simplicity. “Were the other detention rooms too convenient? Or do you just like walking?”

“A bit of cardio first thing in the morning does wonders for the metabolism,” he says, somehow managing to keep a straight face. Phil Coulson has a resting smug face. It’s absolutely infuriating to hold a conversation with someone who looks and acts like they know everything about you, chances are, he probably does.

Which also means, he knows exactly how to get on your nerves.

Natasha’s knows him pretty well. She’s worked with him enough to get a feel for how his mind works. While he may act like (and be) a smug know-it-all, there’s always a reason behind his antics. So she crosses her arms and waits for him to share it with her.

“This wing is the only one built for superhuman detainees.”

Interesting. Powered people are… wild cards, to say the least. It’s such a broad term; there’s no way to know what’s heading your way when dealing with them. Half the Avengers are powered people, and each of them have a set of skills unique to themselves. “I get the feeling this assignment won’t be as simple as I thought,” she says.

Coulson doesn’t respond immediately. He has that smug look on his face again, and Natasha  _ swears _ there’s an almost eager look in his eye. He has a tablet in his hands and swipes his fingers across the screen. “Ever heard of the Voile Noir Lounge?”

“It doesn’t ring a bell.”

“I didn’t expect it to. It wasn’t anything special until a recent change in ownership turned it into a front for elicit black market trading. Now it’s a trafficking cesspool, and some people on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s watchlist have started using it to meet with buyers for drugs, weapons, and everything else that can land you a life sentence.” He taps on the tablet and holographic images of the lounge are projected just above the screen. It’s the spitting image of one of those outdated cigar bars, complete with the leather loveseats, vintage-but-still-ugly rugs, and hazy lighting.

“Last night,” Coulson continues, “the team we sent in for recon had their covers blown. If you think felons are trigger happy, imagine how they’d react to a group of agents crashing their party.”

She doesn’t have to imagine it. She knows exactly what a bullet in the shoulder feels like. “Doesn’t sound like much of a party.”

“Oh, it wasn’t. Luckily, we didn’t suffer any casualties, but we weren’t anticipating this kind of situation. When bullets started to fly, no one wasted time in fleeing the scene, and we couldn’t do much to stop it.”

If this were a suit-up-and-track-down-the-baddies kind of mission, Coulson wouldn’t waste time debriefing Natasha inside headquarters. She would already be dodging bullets out in the field. But she’s not. Instead, she’s standing in a hallway that contains a suspicious amount of armed guards.

“Doesn’t explain why you need rooms to detain superhumans.”

“Bad people aren’t big on paying their worker bees.” Coulson shrugs. He taps on the tablet again, shifting the projection to a series of mugshot-like photos. “So they resorted to human trafficking. These are the ones we managed to take into custody, and according to our sources, more than a few of them are powered individuals.”

So not only were these people treated and sold like objects, but at the first sight of danger, they were probably tossed away like ones too. Lovely.

“The containment rooms are precautionary,” she realizes.

“Exactly,” he says. “We’re not entirely sure of who’s powered, what these people can do, or where they stand on the whole moral compass thing. They’re all high risk, and as long as there’s a chance of certain people wanting them back, we can’t release them back into the wild.”

“They can recognize who was in the lounge.”

“So we need to get them on our side. Which brings us to why I called you in today.” He taps something on the tablet and one of the photos are enlarged on the display. It’s a young woman with blonde hair and straight bangs. She has mascara marks streaked around her eyes and faded traces of red lipstick around the corners of her mouth. “Meet Francine.”

“Is she dangerous?”

“No idea. But if it makes you feel better, she hasn’t tried to attack anyone yet.”

Actually. That does help. Only a little, but it’s better than nothing.

Natasha sighs. “What do we know about her so far?”

“She speaks French, she might have abilities, and she definitely doesn’t want to be here.” Coulson switches off the tablet and the holographic display. “Your job is to ask questions, get her to trust you, and put us in her good graces. Hopefully we can find out who she was before all of this happened.”

If Natasha’s going to learn anything about this girl’s past or present, she’s gonna need to speak with her face to face. “You say she only speaks French?”

“As far as we know.”

This girl with smudged makeup and dull eyes may not be the  _ best  _ conversationalist, but Natasha’s never been particularly picky about these things. It’s been a while since she’s had the opportunity to practice any of her Romance languages. 

As Clint would say (usually before making a bad decision), there’s no time like the present. “Alright,” she nods, a look of decision settling in her eyes. Coulson dismisses her and points her in the direction of her assignment.

Compared to their police counterparts, S.H.I.E.L.D. holding cells are an absolute luxury. No cement walls, no metal bars, no shitty mattress pads or benches. Instead of imprisoning, they’re used to house and contain possible threats that need to be monitored. Each room has a bed, a small sitting area, and a surveillance camera with footage only accessible through one of those tablets Coulson had.

Natasha passes the two agents standing guard outside the room and they let her inside without a second glance. The door clicks shut behind her. And a heeled shoe comes flying at her face.

Natasha ducks out of the way. The shoe hits the wall with a thud and falls to the ground with second, significantly softer thud. And the girl— Francine— is barefoot in the middle of the room, holding the matching heel and fully prepared to strike again.

She’s wearing a black cocktail dress with sheer, tattered tights. Natasha can only assume they weren’t run with tears before last night, but she doesn’t have much opportunity to think about it. 

“Ne venez pas plus près!”  _ Don’t come closer! _ Francine tightens her grip on the heel and raises it up, making her intentions very clear. 

The chances of Natasha having to dodge another flying shoe are pretty high, but at least Francine will be out of ammunition afterwards. Unless she’s one of the powered people and secretly has an ace up her sleeve. Natasha puts her hands up in a placating gesture. “Calmez-vous. Je suis de ton côté.”  _ Calm down. I’m on your side. _

Francine doesn’t falter. She keeps her eyes on Nat and tightens her grip on the heel. “Laisse-moi tranquille.”  _ Leave me alone. _ She gestures toward the door. “Sortez.”  _ Get out. _

If Francine was holding a gun rather than a stiletto, this scene would be identical to one Natasha found herself in just last week. But the fact that she’s not actually armed makes it a relatively strange situation. Natasha’s not in any real danger, since she can easily duck out of the way again, and Francine— well, from the way she has all her weight shifted onto her right leg, it’s likely she’s already out of commission and that throwing shoes was her final line of defense.

Natasha didn’t notice it at first, but there’s a definite discoloration in the girl’s left knee. It’s swollen and it’s a wonder that she’s still on her feet. Natasha takes a small step forward and Francine takes a step back, wincing from the movement.

Natasha gestures toward the sitting area. “Tu es blessé. Debout sur votre jambe ne fera qu'empirer les choses.”  _ You’re hurt. Standing on your leg will only make things worse. _

She pauses for a moment. The unyielding look in her eyes softens a bit, but she doesn’t hesitate to continue standing her ground. “Dis-moi ton nom.”  _ Tell me your name. _

“Natasha Romanoff,” she answers. “Je suis un agent de la sécurité intérieure. Vous êtes en sécurité ici.”  _ I’m an agent for Homeland Security. You’re safe here. _

Francine lowers her makeshift weapon, but doesn’t let go of it. Not just yet. “N'es-tu pas ici pour me faire mal?”  _ You aren’t here to hurt me? _

“Nan.”  _ Nope. _

“Et tu es là pour m'aider?”  _ And you’re here to help me? _

“Oui.”  _ Yes. _

Francine releases a breath and drops the stiletto, letting it hit the floor with a thud _. _ “Je ne sais pas où je suis.”  _ I don’t know where I am. _

Natasha puts her arms down and takes a moment to get the blood flowing back to her fingers. “New York,” she says, helping Francine over to the bed. She takes a long moment to swing her injured leg onto the mattress, and Nat props pillows up under her knee. “D'où êtes-vous?”  _ Where are you from? _

“Lattes,” Francine says, an air of uncertainty around her words. She pauses for a moment, but nods and continues. “C'est une petite ville. Juste en dehors de Montpellier. Beaucoup de poisson.”  _ It’s a small place. Just outside of Montpellier. A lot of fish. _

Natasha pulls up a seat, making sure to keep a good distance between them. Francine’s calmed down and doesn’t look like she’s going to make any more attacks, but there’s still a chance that she has powers. And more often than naught, powered people aren’t always in complete control of their abilities.

Francine brings a hand to her mouth and yawns, a sudden exhaustion falling over her.

Natasha sits back in her chair. “Tu es fatiguée?”  _ You’re tired? _ Francine nods and starts rubbing at her eyes. It’s to be expected. Adrenaline was probably the only thing keeping her on her feet, and now that it’s starting to die down, the exhaustion’s going to hit her like a brick.

The conversation is more or less coming to a conclusion, and Francine looks like she’s fading fast. Natasha might as well get a few more questions in before she has to retreat. “Quel est ton nom?”  _ What’s your name? _

“Francine,” she says, her voice soft with drowsiness.

“Et ton nom de famille?”  _ And your last name? _

She pauses for a moment. That moment stretches into seconds, and Francine still doesn’t have an answer. She shakes her head, and Natasha knows that these things happen a lot, but she still has to bite back a sigh. Francine is  _ literally _ the most basic name in France, and doing background checks on someone without their last name isn’t exactly the easiest endeavor.

Natasha’s got her fair share of work cut out for her. She gets up and starts to the door to get a headstart on this near-impossible case, but stops just before she reaches it. She has something to ask, and it may not be important to the case, but she’s curious. “Toute chance que vous parlez anglais?”  _ Any chance you speak English? _

She pauses again. “Je connais un peu.”  _ I know a little. _

“Prouve le.”  _ Prove it. _

“My leg hurts, I am very tired, and I would like to go to sleep.” 

That’s what she thought. Little known fact that bilingual people will fuck with others as soon as the opportunity emerges. Nat denied knowing English and only spoke in Russian when she was first caught by S.H.I.E.L.D. And from the way Francine spoke without hesitation and without any hint of her native French accent, it looks like she had a similar idea.

Natasha excuses herself from the room and leaves Francine to rest. She’ll check the monitors and come back when she wakes up, probably with an ice pack or something to help with her leg. This assignment is definitely going to keep Natasha busy for quite a while, but at least it won’t going to be tedious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I speak English and I've only ever studied Spanish in depth. All my French linguistic skills are based around what I know from Spanish (since they're from the same language family and have similar structures), so if you're fluent in French and notice that my translations are a little off, I apologize for that. Also, French is a pretty complex language so congrats if you know any!


End file.
